CREATING A RECORDING DESK

One of the first things I learned following my crash course in audio work is that recording good quality sound is remarkably easy and inexpensive. A large box, a decent microphone, some soundproofing and a laptop and you're pretty much there for £200. Desktop PCs, much as I love them, have big fans and although you mentally tune it out the microphone doesn't so you need a laptop. Don't forget either that ticking clock on your office wall, it's louder than you think!

Acoustic soundproofing foam is easily available online and to start with I padded out a recycling box from my local Council in Hyndburn. The microphone I ended up with is a Cytronic CCU2 studio condenser microphone and it picks up beautifully. I bought a reasonably powerful reconditioned laptop with a solid state hard drive and downloaded the Audacity software that I had been using at The Custard Factory then started practising daily.

However, the one thing which soon became apparent was that no matter how good your gear is you need to be fully comfortable whilst recording. The recycling box was not big enough to fit a script clipboard in and the desk was being shared with my video editing PC which made things a little cluttered. My chair didn't naturally sit me in the correct posture and the space under the desk wasn't enough to move my legs about without bumping into things. This all needed sorting before I could even think about auditioning properly.

Scroll forward several weeks and I had now acquired a bottle tub (approximately 30 inches x 30 inches x 30 inches) which was much more suitable to work in. I changed the layout of my desk and the chair so that everything felt more comfortable to sit at and began test recordings.

Immediately, my enthusiasm returned and I started practsing with lots of different reading material. Audacity is very simple to use and I soon found that the sound quality of my recordings was better than those I had made in Birmingham.

I was ready to go!